Finding Hailsham
by AlKiMi
Summary: 'Driving around the country now, I still see things that will remind me of Hailsham'. Kathy H. didn't think she'd find her old school again - in fact, she had almost given up hoping. Then, one day, purely accidentally, she stumbles across Hailsham's gates and decides to venture inside.


I'm not sure how long I'd been driving for. A couple of hours, maybe. I was on my way back from a Centre near Bath, after the completion of one of my donors following their third donation. I'd been particularly close to her - close enough that I'd spent nearly all of my waking hours down at her Centre - and I'm not sure I would have found it if it weren't for my focusing so hard on the road whilst blinking away tears. I've always been a careful driver - it wouldn't do for me to get into an accident or anything like that - but my brain didn't seemed to be having a hard time sending that message to my tear-ducts. I don't think it was all because of my last donor. My tears were for Tommy, and for Ruth, and for all the people from Hailsham that I'd lost. For myself. I would be moving into a Completion Centre in less than a month, now. My last donor was just that - my last. I would have a short time to myself, to pack everything up in the bedsit and to give up my car, and then I would be moving to Dover, to the same Centre Ruth was at, the one with the tiled rooms and the beautiful views from the windows. Although it would be the Centre I'd have most liked to complete at, I'd have liked a little more time. A few years, perhaps, to go over everything in my mind, to organise my thoughts without an air of sickness clouding me. I'd seen enough donors in my time of being a carer to know exactly to expect when my time came to donate, yet I still couldn't picture myself lying frail in that bed, my hair limp and greasy, dressed perpetually in my nightclothes, hooked up to tubes and machinery that would keep my shell of a body alive long enough that they could take away what remained of my insides.  
So, yes, if I hadn't been concentrating so hard on my driving that particular day, whilst covering that particular stretch of land, I'm don't think I would have found Hailsham again. I'd stopped searching for it a long time ago, and I wasn't sure I'd even recognise it after such a long time. But it was there. I felt a strange tugging sensation in my stomach whilst navigating down a particularly tricky stretch of road, and where the path wound in a tight arc, I saw a large set of gates to my right, and all of a sudden I was staring down past the metal bars at my old school.  
Of course, I wasn't certain, at first. The gates had rusted and were bolted shut with thick chains, so that the lettering that once bore 'Hailsham School' was barely legible. The side gate for pedestrians wasn't locked, so I left the car at the side of the road and wandered out onto the moor, clutching the metal railings as if they were the only thing holding me down to earth. I had dreamed of this moment so many times; in my daydreams, however, Hailsham hadn't looked so run-down, never had this air of abandonment surrounding it. There was always noise - the chatter of students as they came inside from the Pavilion, the shout of a guardian as someone trampled the flowerbeds, the scraping of knives and forks in the dining hall. In reality, the only sound was the chirp of a bird overhead and the rustle of the wind in the trees. The gate squeaked as I put pressure on its rusted hinges, but it swung open to admit me, and I stepped gratefully inside. There was nothing keeping me from my past now. It could be gathered in both arms and cradled like a small child, held by the hands and swung around and around until I grew dizzy. Suddenly, the past was a tangible thing. Ruth and Tommy would be waiting for me just down this gravel driveway, waiting outside the main building with their arms outstretched to envelop me in an embrace, and we would squeal and cry together before we'd go inside. We'd talk about anything and nothing, sitting in the library with the fire going, or in the dorms on the beds, or in one of the empty classrooms. Perhaps we'd go outside on the Pavilion, or on a bench by the pond. We'd take a walk in the gardens. We'd do everything. It wouldn't matter. Time wouldn't matter. Time wouldn't _exist_.  
The images I'd drawn up of my best friends reaching out to me faded away with every step I took closer toward the school. The driveway wasn't very long, and in only five minutes I was standing by the main entrance, where Madame's car would be parked when she visited, where the delivery men would unload their boxes for the Sales. The weeds that were always so carefully trimmed were now overgrown and pushing through the gravel, the grass of the playing fields mottled with dandelions and nettles. I tried not to look at them.  
I'd expected the doors to be locked, and I wasn't wrong. Instead I walked around the back, past the dying flowerbeds and the pond, turned green with algae, to the furthest windows where the offices of the guardians lay. These were low enough for me to climb through, so I unlatched the closest one and pushed with all my might until the pane slid open, and when it did, I hoisted myself up and through, landing with a bump in Miss Lucy's old office.  
The smell of decay was present even in these rooms, which must have been among the last to have been abandoned. A musty smell, like old dust, clogged my nostrils, and a hand instinctively flew to cover my mouth and nose. It wasn't fast enough, and I doubled up coughing for a good few minutes before I could move any further into the building.  
Everything was coated in thick layers of dust, I realised as I moved about the building. All the books in the library, the shelves, the dining tables. I tried flicking on a few lamps to light my way, but the electricity must have been cut off a good few years ago, and nothing happened except a few sparks flying in the dormitories when I touched the switch. I let out a cry of terror, then, startled by the explosion of noise and light in a place that for so long had known neither. When I found my bed and lay down on it, I found myself wondering if anybody else had made it back, wandered these halls in the same way I was doing. I expect someone had to have done. I wondered why they hadn't left a window or a door open for me in their exploration of the place, and then reasoned that whoever it was might have been covering their tracks.  
I realised that the bed I was lying on wasn't really my bed anymore, and pulled open the drawer beside it to rummage for anything its previous tenant might have left behind. Nothing except a torn bit of paper and an old, sticky cough sweet. This prompted me to move about all the beds in the room, and only in Ruth's old bed did I find an old cassette tape with the tape wound out of it, and a small notebook with several pages torn out. The other drawers in the dorm were barren.  
I made my way up the stairs to the classrooms, then, trailing my hands across empty blackboards and anatomical statues and exercise books with faded names, illegible in the dim light. Moving slowly, as if in a dream, I picked up a piece of chalk and trailed it across a blackboard, drawing a long, wavering pattern that reeked of carelessness. It was easy to let go - much easier than clinging on had been - and disregard all of what we had been told about the importance of art and our creations. Art shouldn't have to be _good_ to show what lies beneath, to capture your soul. The ability to merely create something individual should be enough. Souls can't be captured, they shouldn't be framed for anyone to see. Souls shouldn't need to prove anything to anyone. We shouldn't have to prove anything to anyone.  
I'm not sure my thoughts had ever been as rebellious as they were in that Hailsham classroom. I remembered sitting in that very room all those years ago whilst one of the guardians displayed a video on what our donations would be like, and accepting with blind faith that that was what I had been born to do. All those years ago I would never have dreamed of revolting against our purpose in life, yet here I was... drawing a wavy line in chalk on a blackboard. A blackboard in an abandoned boarding school that would soon be knocked down. A line that nobody would ever see.  
I imagined, then, how easy it would be to go into a rage as Tommy used to do. To scream and curse the world and everyone in it, to throw my arms out and send the desks around me toppling to the floor, to smash the windows and break down the doors and bellow until my voice was hoarse. Those urges weren't difficult to suppress. Losing control like that would do no good, just as drawing that line hadn't done anything other than making me feel better. I wondered if those rages made Tommy feel better, afterwards. I wonder if he felt rejuvenated, alive, after he'd collapsed into a trembling heap on the ground.  
I wiped the line out angrily with my sleeve and left the room, taking the stairs two at a time to reach the top floor of the building, where the medical rooms and Miss Emily's office lay. Most of the things from these rooms had been cleared out with the residents, but the blue plastic screen still stood in the corner of the medical room and nobody had moved the examination couch. I perched upon it for a few seconds, taking in the view of the hills from the topmost room, before hopping down to the floor as I had done so many times before as a child, relishing the feeling of solid ground beneath my feet once again.  
It was so easy to lose yourself in those grounds. The entire experience felt surreal - as if I could wander the buildings forever without tiring or growing hungry. Whilst I was safely cocooned in Hailsham's nostalgic presence, the outside world - the loss of Tommy and Ruth, my upcoming donations, the fact that I was no longer a carer - seemed inconsequential.  
Something broke in me, then, as I stumbled down the stairs again. The silence. The dust. The rust on the gates. My memories weren't enough. My friends, my loves, were all gone. Their ghosts couldn't even haunt these halls because Hailsham was lost to all of us even though I had found it again. Although it must have done me some good to come here, it had also broken me, seeing once again all the happiness that I could never have again. Yet I had had it once. Shouldn't that have been enough? I had known laughter and games, felt sunshine on my face and snow on my skin. I had made friends, and fallen in love, and lived a life in the short time I had been allowed to craft one for myself. It was more than most people got. More than my donors from the less fortunate schools - battery farms, as Tommy had called them. I couldn't imagine myself growing up in a place like that, and, thanks to Hailsham, I hadn't had to. Instead I had been allowed to create - to paint and to draw and to sculpt - and to learn - about all sorts of things - and share these things with the people closest to me.  
I considered all of this as I headed out of the building, turning so that I was walking backwards with my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my mac, so I could watch the buildings of my childhood fade as I made my way back to the car. I even thought about staying. Leaving the car behind on the road and moving into Hailsham; but even without thinking of the practical implications - the lack of heating and light, as well as the obvious need for food and running water - I'm not sure I could have stood waking in those same dorms each day, knowing that there was no Ruth there to whisper with about the rumours that we had heard or to speculate with about Tommy's latest misfortune, no Tommy to hold my hand and tell me that it would be okay, no guardians to ask for advice. And even if there had been - even if, by some miracle, I could have brought them back - after all that we'd been through at the Cottages and regarding the deferrals, I think we might have just grown too far apart to be put back together again.  
And although I climbed back into my car with a heavy heart after securing the gate behind me, I knew that I had made the right decision. I wouldn't remember how to access this stretch of road again, and perhaps that was for the best. It would fade into the memory of every other road I had driven down, become blurred at the edges and merge with other patches of field and curves in other roads, and one day I would think that I'd done it - I'd found Hailsham, again! - it would turn out that the gates were simply gates leading to a farm and the road had simply appeared familiar at first glance.  
My expedition had not been in vain, though. In finding Hailsham, I had recovered a small piece of myself that I had thought long missing - the part of me that was able to forgive. To be accepting of my fate without becoming docile. The part of me that could cope with loss, as I had been able to before I had lost those closest to me. Although Hailsham had been abandoned and left to be taken over by nature, my soul would not be destroyed in the same way. I could conquer, draw thousands of curved lines on countless blackboards, without being stupid about it. I would not let them break me. If Hailsham had taught me anything, it was that we were people. We weren't just organ donors. We were people, with thoughts and feelings and _souls_. And they will not break my soul.


End file.
